Bogusław Buszewski, Viorica Railean-Plugaru, Paweł Pomastowski
Chair of Environmental Chemistry and Bioanalytics, Faculty of Chemistry & Centre for Modern Interdyscyplinary Technology Nicolaus Copernicus University, Gagarin 7, 87-100 Toruń, Poland, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Rapid detection and identification of microorganisms is a challenging and important aspect in many areas of our life, beginning with medicine, ending with industry. Unfortunately, classical methods of microorganisms’ identification are based on time-consuming and labor-intensive approaches. Screening techniques require rapid and cheap grouping of bacterial isolates, however modern bioanalytics demands comprehensive bacterial studies on molecular level. The new approach to the rapid identification of bacteria is to use the electromigration techniques, especially capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). CZE is an important technique used in the analysis of microorganisms. However, the analysis of microbial complexes using this technology still encounters several problems – uncontrolled aggregation and/or adhesion to the capillary surface. One way to resolve this issue is the CZE analysis of microbial cell with surface charge modification by bivalent metal ions (e.g. Ca2+aq, Zn2+aq). Under the above conditions, bacterial cells create compact aggregates, and fewer high-intensity signals are observed in electropherograms. The capillary electrophoresis of microbial aggregates approach with UV and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI TOF MS) detection has been presented.
The aim of this study was to characterize the charge and surface of the bacteria in order to determine their role in adhesion and aggregation phenomena during the electrophoretic separation. The use of experimental techniques, including electrochemical and electrophoretic allowed the description of the relationship between the acid-base properties of pathogens and their behavior. In this studies was performed the identification of bacterial via spectrometric techniques.
Acknowledgments:
This work was supported by the National Science Centre (NCN, Warsaw, Poland) projects No. 2013/08/W/NZ8/701 – Symfonia-1, Maestro-6 (2015-2017) and by European Social Found, Polish National Budget, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship Budget (within Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources) “Krok w przyszłość 2014-2015”